Moral Relativism Quotes

“All ethics and morals are culturally relative. And Esme's reaction taught me that while cultural relativism is an easy concept to process intellectually, it is not, for many, an easy one to remember.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, The People in the Trees

“George Bush made a mistake when he referred to the Saddam Hussein regime as 'evil.' Every liberal and leftist knows how to titter at such black-and-white moral absolutism. What the president should have done, in the unlikely event that he wanted the support of America's peace-mongers, was to describe a confrontation with Saddam as the 'lesser evil.' This is a term the Left can appreciate. Indeed, 'lesser evil' is part of the essential tactical rhetoric of today's Left, and has been deployed to excuse or overlook the sins of liberal Democrats, from President Clinton's bombing of Sudan to Madeleine Albright's veto of an international rescue for Rwanda when she was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Among those longing for nuance, moral relativism—the willingness to use the term evil, when combined with a willingness to make accommodations with it—is the smart thing: so much more sophisticated than 'cowboy' language.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left

“Believe me, Eugenie, the words "vice" and "virtue" supply us only with local meanings. There is no action, however bizarre you may picture it, that is truly criminal; or one that can really be called virtuous. Everything depends on our customs and on the climates we live in. What is considered a crime here is often a virtue a few hundred leagues away; and the virtues of another hemisphere might, quite conversely, be regarded as crimes among us. There is no atrocity that hasn't been deified, no virtue that hasn't been stigmatized.”
― Marquis de Sade, Philosophy in the Boudoir

“Communism has never concealed the fact that it rejects all absolute concepts of morality. It scoffs at any consideration of "good" and "evil" as indisputable categories. Communism considers morality to be relative, to be a class matter. Depending on circumstances and the political situation, any act, including murder, even the killing of hundreds of thousands, could be good or could be bad. It all depends on class ideology. And who defines this ideology? The whole class cannot get together to pass judgment. A handful of people determine what is good and what is bad. But I must say that in this respect Communism has been most successful. It has infected the whole world with the belief in the relativity of good and evil. Today, many people apart from the Communists are carried away by this idea.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Warning to the West

“Gradually, the unthinkable becomes tolerable, then acceptable, then legal, then praised.”
― Joni Eareckson Tada

“Babette looked too good for the place tonight, but then goodness is only relative after all ("Steps Going Up" aka "Guillotine" aka "Men Must Die")”
― Cornell Woolrich, The Ten Faces of Cornell Woolrich: An Inner Sanctum Collection of Novelettes and Short Stories

“Their quarry had been cornered in his defenses and their bloodlust was such that they were likely to pay top Julep to watch him escape, so that he might be brutalized and killed before their very eyes, as this was much more gratifying to them than simply watching justice be enacted. They, too, understood that societal constructs for justice were moderate gratification, at best, as they were empty and subject to contradictions and compromises steeped in moral relativism and an unconditional dependence upon overblown semantics that made the law a mockery of itself. As for the ideologies that these hollow systems of jurisprudence sought to define and uphold: these could easily be subjugated through a meticulous analysis of the trivial components of one statute or another. The rule of law had failed them. What the people wanted, in its stead, was rather simple: moral absolutes. Good versus evil. And evil was not to be simply prevailed over. Evil was to be dominated and effectively eliminated, because as long as it was able to while away the time somewhere—in some sweaty prison cell, far away, staring out the barred window with a wry smile, as it plotted its next offensive on the Common Good, a sense of wholeness could not be achieved.”
― Ashim Shanker, Don't Forget to Breathe

“Truth is only relative to those that ignore hard evidence.”
― A.E. Samaan

“America's state religion, is patriotism, a phenomenon which has convinced many of the citizenry that 'treason' is morally worse than murder or rape.”
― William Blum

“The passage that he had found in the book had been riddled with ambiguities and contradictions only reserved for those most valiant in overriding their legalistic forbearance into a necessary frenzy that would allow them to suitably work up a case for one side or the other on how the Law, without the possibility of misinterpretation, states If ABC, then DEF—or for the sake of acknowledging the counterargument first as a courtroom tactic, the case might also be made that the Law states the antithesis of the aforementioned If ABC, then DEF, but gives allowance within reasonable parameters for a provisional XYZ to be granted in exceptional cases. And thus, it was a matter not so much of making one’s case in a clear and logical sense, but one for the lawyers to battle out in the arena of pathos, as it was clearly the emotional pleas that could evoke a sense of sympathy in the courtroom and overturn otherwise painstaking endeavors at using the tools at hand to make pleas based upon incontrovertible facts.”
― Ashim Shanker, Don't Forget to Breathe

“Implicit … in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth, the infallibility of any idea or ideology or theology or “ism,” any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course, or drive both majorities and minorities into the cruelties of the Inquisition, the pogrom, the gulag, or the jihad.
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A rejection of absolutism, in all its forms, may sometimes slip into moral relativism or even nihilism, an erosion of values that hold society together…”
― Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

“The idea so commonly found that scepticism leads to toleration arises from considering the effects of scepticism in the intellectual who takes no active part - not its effects in the man of action. In the man of action, moral relativism and scepticism as to the absolute and universal value of his priunciples are no obstacle to a fanatical belief in their immediate value as his own clan at the actual moment; they do not weaken in the least his will to impose his principles. How should he glimpse a soul of truth in the principles of others, entitling them to respect, when he does not believe in noble origins of this kind even for his own principles?”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, Sovereignty: An Inquiry into the Political Good

“If there is no objective morality then love is no better than murder.”
― Frank Turek

“Protestant Christianity, whether in its liberal or conservative garb, finds itself waking up each morning in bed with a deteriorating modern culture, between sheets with a raunchy sexual reductionism, despairing scientism, morally normless cultural relativism, and self-assertive individualism. We remain resident aliens, OF the world but not profoundly in it, dining at the banquet table of waning modernity without a whisper of table grace. We all wear biblical name tags (Joseph, David, and Sarah), but have forgotten what our Christian names mean.”
― Thomas C. Oden, The Transforming Power of Grace

“If people have no respect for God, no love for their Maker, I would ask the question another way: Why not pillage, rape, persecute and murder? If it feels good, and they can get away with it, why not? If God is dead or does not exist, as these people believe, why are not all things permitted? Why should they restrain themselves? Because it’s just wrong? Because it’s not the way civilized people behave? Because what goes around comes around? Because they’ll end up feeling terrible inside?
Within tidy circles of properly socialized and reasonable people, such appeals can seem like they actually have the power to restrain people from doing what they otherwise feel like doing. But in the real world outside the philosophy seminar room, oppressors frankly don’t care that you think it’s just wrong. Who are you, they ask, to foist your random moral intuition on them? Who are you to tell them or the lords of the Third Reich what civilized people should and should not do? If what goes around tends to come around, then there’s no moral problem, only a practical problem of making sure it doesn’t come around to you. They think, Fine, if being brutal makes you feel terrible inside, then don’t do it. But it makes me feel powerful, alive, exhilarated and masterful, so quit whining — unless you want to try to stop me.
This description of a dark Nietzschean world of self-will — a vacuum devoid of moral authority or spiritual resources for good — used to sen excessively melodramatic to me. But then I got out more. The world is truly full of brutal oppression because humans have rejected their Maker, the source of all goodness, mercy, compassion, truth, justice, and love.”
― Gary A. Haugen, Good News About Injustice: A Witness of Courage in a Hurting World

“A rejection of absolutism, in all its forms, may sometimes slip into moral relativism or even nihilism, an erosion of values that hold society together, but for most of our history it has encouraged the very process of information gathering, analysis, argument, and persuasion which allows us to make better, if not perfect, choices – not only about the means to our ends, but also the ends themselves.”
― Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

“Let It Go' is the most popular song for kids in America and it has the Lady GaGa message.”
― Ben Shapiro

“Evil has an ordinary face. It laughs, it cries, it deflects, it rationalizes, it makes great pasta. These [Mafia] killers were people who had crossed an indelible line in human experience by intentionally taking another life. They all constructed their own narrative to explain and justify their own killing. None of them saw themselves as bad people. To a person, they all said the same thing: The first time was really, really hard. After that, not so much.”
― James Comey, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership

“America will not pretend that jailed dissidents prefer their chains, or that women welcome humiliation and servitude.”
― George W. Bush, U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses

“Ever since moral relativism ushered in 'personal truths' the validity of 'science' has become subjective.”
― Frank Salvato

“Cultural relativism has used this deceit to gain power. The absolute relativists want to assert their sincere desire for dialogue UNTIL they become a majority. Then they often want to settle issues by either exclusion or coercion. They first argue for democratic fairness, but when they acquire their majority, they are tempted to turn immediately to a triumphalism that assumes that liberal justice has triumphed. From then on, dialogue about truth is forbidden, and about absolute truth is absolutely forbidden.”
― Thomas C. Oden, Turning Around the Mainline: How Renewal Movements Are Changing the Church

“This is a speech we've all heard before. From the con artists who aren't like the burglars, who aren't like the armed robbers, who only ever broke a bone if the victim had it coming and the murderers who made 'one mistake' and are forced to pay for it for the rest of their lives. They want to know what you're doing about the real criminals, the rapists and the paedophiles. Who want to know why you're wasting resources on them when we should be tackling female genital mutilation or political corruption”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Rivers of London: Detective Stories #2

“Any attempt to “cover everything” would succeed only in producing a completely unmanageable mountain of data. Indeed, in proportion to its increase, which has been enormous in the past half century, the sheer volume of historical scholarship—what Daniel Lord Smail has recently called “the inflationary spiral of research overproduction, coupled with an abiding fear of scholarly exposure for not keeping up with one’s field”—paradoxically militates against comprehension of the past in relationship to the present.

A different approach is needed if we are to avoid being overwhelmed by specialized scholarship, the proliferation of which tends to reinforce ingrained assumptions about historical periodization that in turn hamper an adequate understanding of change over time.”
― Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society

“There was never a creature more fortified against moral prejudices! My inducement for getting into the service of jealous husbands is to lend myself to the enjoyments of their pretty wives.”
― Alain-René Le Sage, The Adventures of Gil Blas of Santillane

“In fact, you cannot condemn torture on political grounds, because in most cases it is perfectly efficient and the torturers get what they want. You can condemn it only on moral grounds and then, necessarily, everywhere in the same way, in Batista's Cuba or in Castro's Cuba, in North Vietnam and in South Vietnam.”
― Leszek Kołakowski, My Correct Views On Everything

“Truth itself is a casualty as the result of a disturbing trend in academia to fully embrace postmodern moral relativism.”
― Ben Shapiro, Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth

“Moral Relativism is a widespread disease.”
― Ben Shapiro, Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth

“I realised that morality is elastic and that you can stretch it this way or that according to individual need and that the poor who can allow themselves to lead strict moral existences are the exception.”
― Rosa Maria Arquimbau, Forty Lost Years

“A crime in one society can be a moral requirement in another society.”
― Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune

“I found my identity in refuting the standards that society tried to impose on me. I refused to concede to anyone else’s standard of good and evil, even if their constructs were rational and mine were not. Relativizing good and evil allowed me to dismiss any concept of a moral code. Dismissing the moral code did not get rid of my inward compass that told me when one thing was wrong and another was right, but it did allow me to mock others’ concepts of right and wrong in preference to my own.”
― Michael J Heil, Pursued: God’s relentless pursuit and a drug addict’s journey to finding purpose